City PR man cries fowl over chicken red-tape
THE Confederation of British Industry’s Rupert Soames was in conversation with Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch at a City dinner the other evening.
Having discussed Brexit and Britain’s place in the world, Soames reminisced about when he felt ‘most optimism’ about UK business.
‘It was in 2012 with the Olympics, it was a wonderful thing, Cool Britannia, we had a brand. It seems an age ago but it was only 12 years,’ he said.
The London Olympics were indeed 12 years ago but, as Badenoch reminded Soames, Cool Britannia was over 25 years ago, in 1997.
Perhaps neither cared to remember those halcyon days happened under New Labour.
AFINITI has been at it again, hiring the great and the good to its advisory board. The Bermuda headquartered tech firm was best known for employing David Cameron before the now Foreign Secretary stepped down in 2021 hearing of sexual harassment allegations against its founder Zia Chishti. But a newly designed Afiniti website shows former BT boss Gavin Patterson and ex-Unilever chief executive Alan Jope have joined the team.
WHAT put the fox in the henhouse for City PR man Neil Bennett last week?
Was one of his clients playing up? Had a chief executive spoken out of turn or was a pesky journalist ruining a campaign? The problem lay in fowl play closer to home, with the spin doctor’s chickens.
Bennett has kept birds at the bottom of his garden for 25 years where they have been providing the H/Advisors Maitland cochief executive with eggs.
But to his horror, Bennett has to register them or face a £5,000 fine for each one he fails to declare.
It is the latest decree from the Department for Food and Rural Affairs and as he points out yet another example of Bureaucracy Britain gone mad.
Bennett, in a column in the City AM newspaper, foresees trouble, writing: ‘When the Man from Defra arrives, owners will smuggle their birds into potting sheds, even wardrobes and cupboards and pretend they were never there.’
GOLDMAN Sachs was abuzz last week after Gareth Southgate was spotted at its London offices.
The England manager was in to give Goldman’s top brass a talk on ‘leadership under pressure’.
England head to the Euros this summer with Southgate set to step down after the tournament.
Could the ex-Aston Villa and Middlesbrough star – who left school with eight O-levels – be tempted to a job as an investment banker? Surely easier than managing Manchester Utd should Erik ten Hag be given the boot – without doubt the hardest job in football.